The spiral, conical surface has a geometrical axis that when printed as structure does not work as such, because its volume is approximately zero. Finally, it becomes extremely flexible and behaves like a balloon filled with water; however, it has no narrow parts. By making its layers wavy, the structure can change from a rigid to a flexible state. In the near future, when we make something we will be able to select structures just like we select material, and the integrated selection of structure and material will produce new artifacts that we cannot as yet imagine.

Credits

Designer: Kotaro Tanimichi
Project director: Shunji Yamanaka

The concept was developed out of three different areas: the application of sound in medical science, coronary artery bypass surgery, and machine learning. The performance is based on the assumption that in the near future a surgeon will work with an advising machine while in surgery.

The installation is built using the performer’s real heart from MRI scans, enlarging its actual size. It is designed to interact when the performer plugs in audio cables and bridges connections, as is the case in coronary-artery bypass surgery. During the performance, the storyline is led by the sound, the mixed video of medical images and the live performance from the webcam. The video and the sound not only lead the storyline but also present the machine, which gives instruction to the performer as a physician. The patient (the heart) being operated on symbolizes human consciousness and faith. The performance poses the question: If machines can reason even better than humans, will we as humans lose some abilities and not even believe ourselves anymore?

Credits

This project was realized in cooperation with Fraunhofer MEVIS and Ars Electronica Futurelab (Peter Freudling, Erwin Reitböck).

Radical atoms in the hands of visionary scientists and engineers are being formed into high-tech materials and applications with astounding properties and capabilities. Neuroscience and biotechnology, robotics, hardware and software play roles in this; so do traditional practices in the crafts and trades.

A hotspot of these trailblazing developments is the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Hiroshi Ishii and his Tangible Media Group have been working on new forms of human-machine interaction for over 20 years. The breakthrough prototypes that have been emerging there can now be seen in the Radical Atoms exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center.

Cillia

Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US)

Cillia is a means of 3-D printing hair structures. This technical solution constitutes a design innovation that will simplify the production of synthetic fur. Nowadays it seems as if 3-D printers can churn out just about anything—from a sports car to food to human skin. Nevertheless, there are some things that, up to now, have required a huge amount of computational time and power to generate with a 3-D printer. They include hair, fur and other structures with dense arrays of extremely fine elements. Using conventional computer-aided design software, a user would have to render each individual hair, elaborating its contours as a mesh of tiny triangles and then converting the cross-sections of that mesh into layer-by-layer instructions for the 3-D printer—a process that would take hours. Cillia eliminates all that with a new voxel-based printing software platform that lets users define the angle, thickness, density and height of thousands of hairs in just a few minutes, whereby Cillia works at a 0.05-millimeter degree of precision. [NOTE: In computer graphics, a voxel is an element in a three-dimensional mesh, and thus corresponds to a pixel in a two-dimensional image.]

Credits

Exhibition: Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Hiroshi Ishii
Research: Jifei Ou, Mike Wang, Gershon Dublon, Chin-Yi Cheng, Karl Willis, Hiroshi Ishii

kinetiX

Jifei Ou, Jannik Peters, Karl Willis, Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US)

kinetiX is a new, transformable material featuring a design that resembles a cellular structure. It consists of rigid plates or rods and elastic hinges. These modular elements can be combined in a wide variety of ways and assembled into multifarious forms.

What the resulting kinetiX structures look like and what characteristics they possess are determined with the help of computer-supported simulations. This makes it possible to derive mathematical models that contain the physical properties and design attributes of the material. Various configurations of the kinetiX structure are then tested by architectural software and stored to a library of various design options. Once such a formal archive has been set up, kinetiX can be quickly and easily configured into a vast array of architectural structures.

Credits

Exhibition: Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Hiroshi Ishii
Research: Jifei Ou, Jannik Peters, Karl Willis, Hiroshi Ishii

aeroMorph

Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Hiroshi Ishii (JP/US)

aeroMorph investigates how materials stacked in multiple layers can be used to make self-folding origami structures. This project works with a programmable bending mechanism that triggers shape-changing behavior in fabric, paper and plastic.

With a specially developed software tool, the basic structure of an origami form can be computer-generated. The tool then simulates the material’s transformation into the finished origami shape and exports this information as a digital fabrication file. A custom-made head of a heat-sealing machine is mounted on a conventional 3-axis CNC machine that precisely cuts the geometric shapes of the origami structure out of the material. This technology has been conceived for use in manufacturing toys and interactive wearables, and in the packaging industry.

Credits

Exhibition: Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Hiroshi Ishii
Research: Jifei Ou, Nikolaos Vlavianos, Melina Skouras, Felix Heibeck, Chin-Yi Cheng, Jannik Peters, Hiroshi Ishii

The exhibition

ars.electronica.art/center/en/ausstellungen/radical-atoms

After exchanging information with Limbitless Solutions, a non-profit organization that produces electrical prostheses for children, the construction of the prosthesis could begin.

Dominik Ballwein and Samuel Lehner employed joints and sophisticated drive technology to replicate as well as possible the basic motions of a healthy arm.

Digital Nature Group at the University of Tsukuba, Pixie Dust Technologies Inc. (JP)

How can we redefine our human presence? The Digital Nature Group has focused on researching the relationship between waves, material and intelligence by computational environments towards building feedback loops between human intelligence and machine intelligence. From the viewpoint of computer science research, they are prototyping the systems to combine wave engineering, organic and meta-materials by digital fabrication and deep learning in order to discover the new ecosystem in the digital age.

The Digital Nature Group consists of over forty people, including students, researchers and the professor, who are all interested in wave engineering, machine learning, materials research. They are promoting research and development not only for academic research but also for use in society.

Like their prototype series, they are developing software that can output the alternative clothes designs by famous designers through deep learning in order to form making loops between ordinary designers and machine intelligence, developing automated wheelchairs and prosthetic body aids, and forming loops including the spatial recognition of machine intelligence with the relationship between light, sound and human body. All of these projects are based on the link between digital fabrication technology, wave-engineering technology and machine-learning technology.

What you see in such prototypes is a direction that differs from modern standardized social forms, modern mass-production formats or mass-communication styles. They define their view of the world as computationally incubated diversity, and by tackling the expansion of the body, expansion of the production process, audiovisual communication by holographic wave engineering for individual communication, and machine intelligence. They are trying to use these emerging technologies to figure out the digital-age ecosystem. This is what they always keep in mind in the process of combining art, science and technology, and thereby trying to solve real social problems using such technologies. The technology meme known as technium, which arises here, seems to be Japanese style and has its own cultural perspective as well.

Credits

Yoichi Ochiai, Atsushi Shinoda, Akira Ishii, Keisuke Kawahara, Amy Koike, Junjian Zhang, Kazuki Takazawa, Kensuke Abe, Kotaro Omomo, Natsumi Kato, Ryota Kawamura, Satoshi Hashizume, Ooi Chun Wei, Yaohao Chen, Hiroki Hasada, Keita Kanai, Mose Sakashita, Naoya Muramatsu, Shingo Uzawa, Yuki Koyama, Yuta Sato, Chihiro Murakami, Ippei Suzuki, Kenta Yamamoto, Shinji Sakamoto, Ayaka Ebisu, Daitetsu Sato, Hiroyuki Osone, Kubokawa Kazuyoshi, Riku Iwasaki, Tatsuya Minagawa, Taisuke Ohshima, Akira Hashimoto, Wataru Kaji, Yuta Ito, Kazuki Otao, Kengo Tanaka, Kohei Ogawa, Kent Kishima, Shinnosuke Ando, Shouki Imai, Yusuke Tanemura

All projects are supervised by Prof. Yoichi Ochiai.

Supported by: Digital Nature Group, University of Tsukuba, Pixie Dust Technologies Inc.

DeepWear

Natsumi Kato (JP), Hiroyuki Osone (JP)

We present DeepWear, a method using deep learning for clothes design. DeepWear designing clothes system use DCGAN to generate images and designers make clothes by receiving inspiration from those images.

Coded Skeleton

Taisuke Ohshima (JP), Miyu Iwafune (JP)

Coded Skeleton is a material that transforms into preprogrammed motions by using simple linear actuators. This property of the material is provided by a 3D-printable geometric structure. The motion is designed by original software that generates a 3D-printable structure that is flexible only in the designed motion but stiff in other deformations. We call this property “isolated flexibility.” It realizes precisely controllable elastic motion by using simple linear actuators, and the design system that has been developed enables us to design the motion of the Coded Skeleton.

Stimulated Percussions

Ayaka Ebisu (JP), Yuta Sato (JP)

Electrical stimulation turns muscles into machines. The body controlled by the program produces rhythms. This is a new method for musical performances which aims to beat out rhythms for beginners. It is easy to play different rhythms simultaneously with the right hand and the left hand.

Live Jacket

Yoichi Ochiai (JP), HAKUHODO Inc. (JP), Go inc. (JP), Kenta Suzuki (JP), Shinji Sakamoto (JP)

Our Live Jacket demonstration allows visitors to wear a jacket with built-in speakers and to listen to music over the whole body. There are 22 built-in speakers which play music from every part of the jacket, so visitors can experience wrap-around sound. In addition, the sounds change depending on the movement of the person wearing it.

Immersive Light Field

Kazuki Otao (JP)

This head-mounted display (HMD) system makes it possible to project images directly into human pupils and to see the environment through an HMD. This system provides an unprecedentedly wide angle and shows the possibility of metamaterials that have properties that do not exist in nature.

Printed Absorbent

Kohei Ogawa (JP), Hiroki Hasada (JP), Kensuke Abe (JP), Kenta Yamamoto (JP)

In this work, we fabricated the structure which causes capillary phenomena. These plants are grown by the structure. Look forward to how it will grow.

Telewheelchair

Satoshi Hashizume (JP), Kazuki Takazawa (JP), Ippei Suzuki (JP)

This telepresence system provides remote care by installing functions such as object recognition on a wheelchair.

In general, because of its lack of accuracy 3D printing is not suitable for making transmission mechanisms. However, in this project, we realized smooth, flexible movements by developing original transmission mechanisms that use 3D printing characteristics such as a complex surface and a flexible structure. These original mechanisms are combined on 3D CAD and various robots with different movements are developed. This work shows the possibility for designing motion and transmission mechanisms using 3D printing.

Credits

Designer: Hiroshi Sugihara
Project Director: Shunji Yamanaka
Collaborators: Satoshi Tanigawa, Kotaro Tanimichi, Ryuma Niiyama

Akinori Goto (JP)

Sculpture of Time is several works developed from the toki– series. Their creation started with the question of what it means to “move.” On one occasion Akinori Goto was impressed by the obvious facts that movement does not exist if time is standing still and that movement is possible due to the flow of time. In other words, time and movement are closely connected. This led the artist to the conclusion that the secrets of movement might become visible by pursuing “time”.

These works realize time, something that cannot be seen, by connecting two-dimensional movement to the third dimension through 3D printing. At first glance, it may look like just a cluster of white mesh, but the time that has been cut out can be reproduced by projecting light through the slits. By visualizing and actualizing time, not only do these works illustrate its relationship with movement, they also attempt to discover the beauty, characteristics and background connections of time born by going beyond dimensions.

Intention

Static symbols—numbers—are given time. They start to move windingly as though they are alive, in a way they can be seen as a single form of life. Furthermore, once a symbol with a meaning of its own is given fresh liveliness it is no longer about simple movement, but is felt as if an intention is created.

Progress

We expand ourselves by using technology longing for a better future. In doing so, we will not remain with our physical augmentation, but lead to enabling our multiple selves to exist on digital ground at the same time. Physical and digital will fuse in future times, and there will come a world without borders. By that time, there might be “the exact same me” with the same appearance and character, existing multiply in the real world. A world “I” am expanding. Where would the original “me” be, when that time comes? How would I be able to say that I am the real “me”?

Energy

This work is created from the movements the artist perceived as beautiful. As time and movement is strongly interrelated, the shape of time created from beautiful movements shall naturally be a time of beauty. This work consists of physical beauty generated by humans, in combination with the precise and elaborate beauty generated by machines.

The sculpture is installed in a bioreactor, with the intention that human Mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs from an adult donor) seeded onto this design will eventually grow into tissue and mineralize into bone on the scaffold.

Regenerative Reliquary made artistic, scientific and technological advances as it required and inspired new innovations for its creation, as well as influencing a new way of thinking. Amy Karle’s bioart work expands opportunities for art and design, biomedical applications, healing and enhancing our bodies, and opens minds to create things that it was never possible to create before.

Credits

Collaborators: Bio-nano scientist Chris Venter, Material Scientists John Vericella and Brian Adzima

Sponsors: Autodesk, California Academy of Sciences, Exploratorium—The Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception and The Bone Room

http://www.amykarle.com/project/regenerative-reliquary/

The viewer can experience this surface adapting to the environment, inviting in light, moisture and sound. The wing-like units of the surface are modular and can thus be replaced or expanded. It is also possible even to mass-produce cheap individual units using printing technology. The information necessary for production and the design files for this project are published open-access on Github.

Credits

This work was produced with the support of the JST ERATO Kawahara Universal Information Network Project.